The drive to buy and save KPLU has six months

The fundraising drive to rescue KPLU-FM 88.5 radio went public about 5:30 a.m. Monday during a break in National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition,” sharing airtime with a Seahawks’ win and signs that stocks would plunge on Wall Street.

Salted by initial gifts of $100,000 and $50,000, the drive has reached more than $424,000, with a long ways to go and not much travel time. “We have six months to do everything,” said station manager Joey Cohn, who has worked at KPLU for 29 years.

The fundraising pitch on KPLU’s website on Friday.

Listener-supporters of the popular jazz/blues/news public radio station raised a ruckus late last fall, with announcement that Pacific Lutheran University would sell KPLU to the University of Washington for $7 million plus $1 million in advertising and promotion. Pacific Lutheran very much needs the money. Under the deal, the KPLU news staff would be abolished, UW-owned KUOW would take over news, and KPLU would lose its identity and assure an all-jazz format.

The proposed sale drew protests, critical newspaper editorials, an angry letter to PLU trustees from the station’s advisory council and a clamor of calls for community ownership that would preserve news and local programming.

University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce responded, and has said the UW will stand down if a community group raises the $7 million needed to buy the license. Cohn and lawyer Stephen Tan, who chairs the KPLU community advisory council, have undertaken the task of raising the money.

It is a formidable task, for several reasons:

The KPLU campaign must not only raise $7 million for the station license, but also enough money to cover legal fees, banking fees, fundraising expenses, plus ongoing new costs involved with transfer of the license.

The station still has a big issue to settle with Pacific Lutheran, namely access to PLU’s Martin J. Neeb Center to produce local programming. KPLU wants to use the building. “It addresses the angry KPLU listeners who gave the initial $6 million to build the first and second floors,” said Cohn. KPLU also had $362,000 worth of equipment, courtesy of a state grant, in the building. It must use the equipment to fulfill the grant.

The KPLU staff and advisory council must draw up a plan for the radio station’s post-purchase future. “We have some formidable people in our data base,” said Cohn. But formidable donors want to see a business plan. A planning meeting is slated, after which Cohn and Tan will sit down with major donors.

Usually, 18 months to two years preparation goes into a major capital campaign by a university or big non-profit. With KPLU-FM, it’s all compressed into the period between now and June 30.

About half the public radio stations in America are community owned. So is KING-FM, which regularly appeals for donors but — blessedly — no longer follows Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony with a musical commercial asking “Why buy a mattress anywhere else?”

KPLU is a successful enterprise. Its vastly successful Jazz 24 online service has an audience of 450,000 people. The station was in the black to the tune of $389,000 last year.

When the KPLU sale was announced in November, the station’s Seattle-based news staff, along with sports pundit Art Thiel, headed off to Mama’s Mexican Kitchen, the popular Second Avenue restaurant itself slated for closure. It was the beginning of a process, in Cohn’s words, that “brought the staff together.” The station has since won defenders and advocates, from editorial writers at the News Tribune in Tacoma to U.S. Reps. Denny Heck and Jim McDermott, D-Wash.

The Pacific Lutheran University administration, by contrast, has taken a public drubbing. It didn’t help when a glowing tribute in KPLU’s 2014 annual report by PLU President Thomas Krise was excised, nor when some PLU regents did not receive the scathing critique of the pending sale by the community advisory council.

KPLU really wants to stay in the Neeb Center. “The Tacoma studio is like the mother ship: Seattle is like a tethered line to the mother ship,” said Cohn. “It gives us a South Sound presence, a Tacoma presence, and means less disruption to staff.

What’s happening now is on twin tracks: The UW and PLU are proceeding with mechanics of the station sale, getting ready to send details off to the Federal Communications Commission. At the same time, supporters of KPLU have until June 30 to accomplish a formidable planning and fundraising task.

For details on how to give, go here Or try to listen closely at 5:30 a.m.

(Editor’ s note: A family member of this writer works at KPLU as a reporter.)